Michelle Obama outmaneuvered Rahm

By Byron Tau

01/06/12 04:52 PM EST

(Photo Credit: AP Photos)

The Huffington Post's Sam Stein and Marcus Baram get an early nugget from Jodi Kantor's forthcoming book, "The Obamas," that examines the testy relationship between Michelle Obama and then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Kantor reports that the first lady managed to outmanuever the veteran Washington operator on two key internal administration fights involving health care reform and comprehensive immigration reform:

Michelle Obama, who came to politics skeptically but saw her husband as someone capable of lofty achievements, lashed out against her isolation. She sent emails to Jarrett when she had complaints about news coverage, which Jarrett would forward to others after removing the first lady's name from them. When she couldn't wedge herself into her husband's schedule, she would send her missives to Alyssa Mastromonaco, the president's director of scheduling. The emails, Kantor writes, "were so stern that Mastromonaco showed them around to colleagues, unsure of how to respond to her boss's wife's displeasure."

It was when the jockeying between the two moved into the policy arena that matters grew most complicated. According to Kantor, in the lead-up to the 2010 midterm elections Emanuel and the first lady were at odds over whether the president should pick up the mantle of comprehensive immigration reformer. The chief of staff saw no point in pushing for legislation that had no chance of passage. The first lady, who had just been confronted by a second grader in a Maryland elementary school whose mother didn't have immigration papers, felt that ignoring the issue was fundamentally at odds with her husband's own political story.

The story goes on to report an anecdote that Emanuel promised to dispatch the first lady on a campaign stop in Florida in exchange for a vote on the health care bill — a tactic that the first lady did not appreciate. The tensions continued over Emanuel's backroom wheelings and dealings to try to get comprehensive health care reform across the finish line.

Kantor writes, "To her, the Scott Brown victory provided grim evidence for what she had been saying for months, in some cases years: [her husband] had been leaning on the same tight group of insular, disorganized advisers for too long; they were not careful planners who looked out for worst-case scenarios."

Emanuel, naturally, had a different read. And according to "The Obamas," he was indignant about how the first lady handled the Brown victory. "Emanuel hated it when people criticized the administration from lofty perches," writes Kantor. "More fundamentally, the chief of staff was trying to persuade the president to scale back his health care efforts, but the first lady wanted him to push forward. Emanuel wanted to win by the standard measures of presidential success: legislative victories, poll numbers. Michelle Obama had more persona criteria: Was her husband fulfilling their mission?"